


Midwife Man

by Hard_boiled_candy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Humor, Castiel's Nickname is Cas (Supernatural), Character Turned Into a Ghost, Death in Childbirth, F/M, Haunting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:15:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29220066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hard_boiled_candy/pseuds/Hard_boiled_candy
Summary: Dean Winchester's wife Carleen, after a normal pregnancy, has a health crisis and dies tragically in childbirth. After this loss, their midwife, Cas, seems to be taking an unusual interest in him and baby Carleen -- until the day Carleen's ghost appears in front of both of them, apparently to convince them to "hook up"! Dean's fine with it.... but his Midwife Man needs some convincing.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 6





	Midwife Man

It had been a completely ordinary pregnancy for Carleen.

It was her first, so everything was new, but everything matched what the books said, and she was a practical woman. She didn’t take on other people’s worries, that’s for sure; she laughed merrily at Dean as he fussed over her and tried to steer her into healthier food choices; she also let him wait on her, with his extreme attentiveness, which she found a lot more enjoyable.

She was a little blonde thing from the wrong side of the tracks, and she was more fun and worked harder than any woman Dean had ever met. Sam liked her, which made marrying her a lot easier. She wasn’t perfect, but he was thirty-five, and he needed to get his shit in gear if he was serious about starting a family. And Carleen just … fit. Her love was big and loud and uncomplicated in its trust.

The two of them hadn’t planned anything. They just had a lot of sex. They’d never met another soul who could keep up with them sexually; it was kind of ‘their thing’. After two years of soaking in Dean’s come – as she coarsely described their sex life to her wide-eyed and giggling besties – she’d finally gotten pregnant.

He’d asked her, during the seventh month when she was so horny she was chasing him around the bedroom and attempting to jump on his dick, as if that was such a good idea. Her response: “It’s totally legit and you can’t hurt me, so _get busy_.”

He said he’d be scared to put a dent in junior’s forehead, and she’d laughed boisterously, sucked him into a memorable hard-on and _then_ jumped on his dick.

Then, six weeks from her due date, her blood pressure, which had been normal, began to climb to worrying heights. Carleen skipped a pre-natal appointment with her maternity team, which included the only male midwife Dean had ever heard of, let alone met. Later, they realized her blood pressure had rocketed upward for a week, unnoticed and unimpeded.

Dean saw his wife was obviously unwell, uncharacteristically headache-y and tired, and bugged her to get her blood pressure checked in the mall drugstore as they were picking up baby accessories (the only activity they had participated in for _weeks,_ or at least that’s how it felt to Dean.)

Dean read the numbers while his blood pounded in his ears and he felt his stomach drop to the floor. Either the machine was broken, or his wife was having a silent medical emergency. Her blood pressure was terrifyingly high.

Dean stayed calm. Inside, he was melting down. He kept hearing Cas, the midwife, addressing both of them very plainly, during the last office visit.“If your blood pressure doesn’t come down, you could stroke out and die, and the baby’s at risk as well. We may need to admit you.”

Her midwives and doctors urged her to schedule an induction, which she did, and then it all went very bad.

The induction turned into a caesarian.

The emergency caesarian section turned into about ten people working on Carleen, and she took two brutal hours, and a lot of blood to die, ‘fighting all the way down’, as one nurse said in tears.

The baby girl she had, against all odds and omens, was fine. Better than fine. Dean only held her for a moment and then she was off to the NICU because (as he overheard) the hospital was terrified she’d die, too, and they didn’t want to risk the lawsuit.

The maternity staff were not used to losing thirty-two year old women; Dean wasn’t alone in his weeping as he stood, leaning into a wall looking at the ground, tears splashing on the tile, only able to say, _“This is all my fault. This is all_ ** _totally_** _my fault.”_

Sam had burned down the I-70 like a maniac, making it just in time to be of some comfort to his brother, but Carleen passed away while Sam was still fighting with the ticket machine in the hospital parking lot. All he could do then was hold Dean while both of them cried; waves of grief crashing into waves of disbelief.

The baby was safe, and her mother, healthy, pink Carleen with her laughing blue eyes and her cute bunny nose and her way of scratching Dean’s head after a long, hard day that made him sigh with pleasure, was grey and still, and her lips were blue and silent.

He spent a couple of minutes with her, stroking her hair and telling her he’d do his best by their daughter, and then the long, ugly process of death and grief came to live with Dean Winchester.

Sam, oddly, objected when he wanted to name the baby Carleen.

“Dean — really — do you need a reminder, every time you say her name?”

“Sammy, don’t. Just don’t.”

Sam stopped. She was given the name Carleen Marie Winchester, since Dean thought the French version of his mother’s name sounded better with Carleen.

Little Carleen was only in the NICU for two days; Dean was there for most of it, holding her, singing to her, and, occasionally, crying on her, and with her. The family wearily trudged through a funeral and a baptism in the same week. Cas came to both.

There were a lot of surprises. People he thought didn’t care about him came out of the woodwork with food and other offers of help. Cas checked up on both of them every day, even on his days off, even when he wasn’t taking call for other midwifery clients.

Suspicious, Dean re-read the contract for midwifery services. He was getting a _lot_ of free visits. Cas seemed more concerned, sometimes, than was professional, and Dean, desperate for both material help and emotional support, did not complain. Cas’s visits were one of the few things that cheered him up, however briefly.

Learning that Carleen had a life insurance policy from work, (a decent one, since it covered death in childbirth), was another surprise. He had a check from them two weeks after he sent them the death certificate.

It was actually Sam that took care of it. Where he would have been without Sam in the first weeks, he did not want to guess.

His own job, as a parts specialist with Singer Salvage was secure. Bobby would hire someone to cover, but on a temporary basis. “Take all the time you need. When you’re ready, come back; part-time at first if you need it.”

When baby Carleen had been home for three months, Cas dropped by, and Dean finally decided to mention his misgivings. Cas looked like he hadn’t slept for a year.

“Cas, we need to talk.” He placed her gently in her ’downstairs crib’ and after rubbing the back of his index finger down her tummy once, he looked up and fixed his gaze at Cas.

It was as if, having looked at Cas, he’d given him permission to speak. “Of course, how can I help?”

“You have to stop visiting.”

A thin thread of distress jarred his voice from its normal soothing tone. “You called the clinic. I know. I know I shouldn’t be here. I can’t help it if I feel your situation more keenly than – than I’ve previously experienced. We’re trying to keep our human and our legal obligations clear in our minds, at the clinic, and I’m torn.”

Dean’s voice was flat, at first. “I signed a waiver, I don’t plan to sue, you or the clinic or anyone. It was Carleen’s decision; you and her doc couldn’t have been clearer to her about the risks. I’m in your corner, Cas, don’t you know that? I think you’re a wonderful midwife and I’d hate to think I could foul up your career because my wife, God bless her, made a decision that killed her.”

“You’re not angry with her. Or me?”

“Damn, Cas, I’m the kind of guy that if _I_ could get pregnant I’d probably be super-casual about how it’s a potentially life-threatening condition and maybe, just maybe, I’d do the exact same thing. So now I’m a single dad, and I have to stop taking stupid risks, but momma Carleen couldn’t have set a clearer example. She’s in heaven right now, Cas, and every time I do something stupid I’ll be hearing her voice ringing in my ears; _‘don’t do like I did’._ ”

“That’s a comforting way of looking at it, that her memory will help care for you and your daughter,” Cas said. He looked like he was about to cry. “Dean. There’s something else.”

“I have a really strong premonition I don’t want to hear this,” Dean said, and as he said that, _Carleen’s disembodied face appeared over Cas’s left shoulder._

It had been many weeks since Dean had last sworn, thinking of Carleen’s tiny shell ears. “Holy shit,” he said. “I’m hallucinating.”

Cas sounded bitter. “What, that your dead wife is looking at you?”

The room was suddenly cold, and Dean shivered.

Dean let another curse rip out. “Fuck, you can see her too?”

Cas agreed, with barely controlled horror, “In my car, at work, once in my bathtub, once in a toilet stall in the mall. I’m just barely holding it together. When did you start seeing her?”

Dean thought he was losing his mind. “What? Never! Before today, I mean. Why the hell is she haunting _you_ instead of me? Were you two having an affair? Jesus Christ, I can’t believe this – ”

“Dean,” Cas said, patiently, several times, before Dean ground to a halt. “She’s been ordering me to look after you since the day she died. She wants me to look after Carleen, but she’s _really_ insistent that I look after _you_.”

The ghostly Carleen was now a face above a misty torso. She pointed directly at Dean, and slowly moved her arm back to point at Cas. Her mouth moved; she looked annoyed and serious, but Dean could not tell what she was saying.

Baby Carleen woke and cried out as if she’d been poked, and the ghostly figure vanished like a soap bubble popped in slow motion.

Dean looked at Cas. “So we both saw her.”

Cas nodded, sadly.

Shaking his head, Dean trotted over to his daughter, who settled almost as soon as he picked her up.

“Now what?”

“Do you plan to tell anyone?” Cas asked fearfully.

“What? No way!” Dean said. “Between the risks of you losing your license and me landing in a psychiatric hospital? Who would my daughter have then? Just Sammy, and he’s not even here in town any more.”

“What does she mean, though?” Cas said uneasily. “Pointing between the two of us? apart from saying I’m supposed to visit with you, I don’t know what she means.”

“Maybe I’m supposed to put a glass slipper on your foot or something. Or vice versa, try’n’ta think outta the box, here.”

Cas blanched. “You think she’s suggesting we – ”

“Carleen used to tease me that I wouldn’t pay attention to her if you were in the room.”

“This is all very inappropriate,” Cas said. His nose and ears were pink. He tried to leave, and Carleen’s face appeared again in the entranceway mirror, which lifted and banged against the wall.

“Dean,” he called, “She’s telling me not to leave.”

“Cas, come back in here. We need to figure out what’s really going on.”

“Look at me,” Dean said. He put baby Carleen on her activity blanket, and walked over to where Cas was standing, his expression miserable as he gazed at the spectre in the mirror. Dean walked past him, put his hand up to the mirror, which bumped once, and Carleen again vanished.

“I told Carleen I had a wicked mancrush on you,” Dean said conversationally.

“What?” Cas said. “Uh, oh, I see.”

“You see what?” Dean said.

Misery in every syllable, Cas said, “I might have hinted to Carleen that I - well, after she – after she teased me about it.”

“Really?” Even with his dead wife checking up on them from a mirror in his front hall, Dean had the gall to smirk a little. “So Carleen’s telling us to get it on?”

To their astonishment, the mirror banged again.

Cas was almost wailing in his distress. “This is ludicrous. Ghost aside, if my professional association hears about this impropriety, I’ll be run out of my practice.”

“C’mon, Cas, plant one on me,” Dean said.

“No!” Cas said, defiant. “That can’t possibly be what fixes this.”

Dean took three quick steps forward, seized Cas by the shoulders, and kissed him. In seconds, Cas’s mouth under his passed through shock, resistance and then their tongues touched. There was a weird short-circuit kind of noise in Dean’s head, and Dean’s brain checked out until Carleen made a little snuffling noise and he came back to himself.

Cas, mouth wet, eyes brilliant, stared at him from inches away and whispered, “I thought you were straight.”

That smirk came back. “Not entirely.”

“I can’t feel her presence any more,” Cas said. He stepped back, looking hopeful.

“Yeah, it’s warmer, somehow,” Dean said. They both looked around questioningly.

All the bumping had stopped.

They listened intently for a moment.

“Maybe that’s all that was required.”

“One kiss? Man, you don’t know Carleen very well, she ran hot,” Dean said reminiscently. “But if you insist, we can wait and see if that was enough to keep her happy.”

It was not.

Two days later, Cas banged on Dean’s door again. It wasn’t difficult to intuit why. His hair was wild, and his eyes were wilder, and he looked a complete stranger to the embrace of Morpheus.

Dean sighed. “I take it you’ve seen Carleen. She’s been around here, too.”

Cas said, “What does she want?”

“She wants us to bump uglies and live happily ever after,” Dean said.

“That’s not part of my life plan,” Cas said resentfully.

“Me neither, but it’s that or find an exorcist who can actually do the job, and I’ve got no freaking clue how I’d even go about that; as far as I know trained exorcists are all Catholic,” Dean said. “I don’t even know if that would work on Carleen, after her upbringing she was a pretty staunch atheist.”

“Well, I was _too,_ until a ghost started making me drop my clipboard at work,” Cas said. “She comes to the clinic, and my house, and my car, but mostly I see her in the room where she died.”

“Jeez, Cas,” Dean exclaimed in horror, “She could scare you off the road!”

“I’m taking the bus to the clinic now,” Cas said. “And taxis to visits. _You’re_ taking this all remarkably well.”

“She’s got me sold. If she wants us to get together I’m okay with it,” Dean said.

“Are you even more … mentally incapacitated … than I am right now?” Cas said.

“Possibly,” Dean said. “Are you gay?”

In a tight, harassed tone, Cas said, “I admitted that already.”

“Siddown, you’re making the place untidy. Personally I identify as a cis bi man with a dick, so check on the compatibility with gayness,” Dean said. He sat down across from Cas and said, “I’d offer you something to drink, but you know where everything is and we’re practically family. On to the next question, which is, are you partnered up with someone right now and that’s why you’re freaking out so badly?”

“You absolute jerk,” Cas said, in his deepest and gravelliest voice. “No, I do not currently have a partner. I’m not exclusive with anyone. I find it absolutely ludicrous to be having this conversation under these circumstances.”

“Yeah, well, the last time I gave Mama Carleen backchat, she shoved the crib out about two inches and I nearly shit myself, so I’m not going to argue with her on the subject. I just want to make her happy so she’ll leave. Anyway, as far as a social life goes, I got a kid hanging off me and my wife just died so I’m not really dating at the moment. So, check on the both of us being readily available,” Dean said.

“Are you trying to Dr. Spock me into this?” Cas said.

“You must have me confused with Mr. Spock, although I’m sure the good doc would agree with me,” Dean said, laughing as Cas’s expression reflected his sudden apprehension of his goof, “and I’d like to think that somebody my dead wife’s hookin’ me up with would at least be _open_ to the idea of logic in the face of all this weird wackiness.”

“I misspoke,” Cas said tersely.

Dean smiled. It was slow, and mesmerizing, and felt like being kissed from across a room, and maybe it shook Cas a little. “It was very cute. I could get used to you ‘misspeaking’. Now for the really hard, and I do mean hard, question. Have you thought about that kiss at all? Because in between having my daddy game on, 24/7, and all the other shit that’s going on in my life, and me crying on a regular basis, it’s pretty much in constant rotation. Thinking about the kiss, I mean.”

Cas tried to speak a couple of times, and then the silence just dragged on.

“Wow,” Dean said. “I’m really sorry I asked. Let’s try to find an exorcist.”

“If I admit to _anything_ I’m automatically potentially under suspension,” Cas said.

“You can fuck me without talking to me, I won’t judge,” was Dean’s swift response.

Cas’s eyes bugged out momentarily, but he got control of himself. “She’ll be watching,” Cas said.

Dean laughed, his head briefly tipped back. “Oh, you bet your sweet ass she’ll be watching, we watched gay porn all the time! I got her agreement that she gets to watch once and then she has to leave us alone.”

“How on earth do you know this?” Cas said.

“Ouija board.”

Cas’s face was a study. On one hand, he longed for it to be true, that Dean could communicate with his dead wife.

He gave voice to his hopes. “You mean we can - we could potentially straighten this out? – ”

Dean smirked again. “No, I really think she wants us to ‘gay the fuck out’ on this. But if you don’t believe me – ”

“I would prefer to check for myself, if I can,” Cas said.

“Sure,” and Dean got the Ouija board out of the desk drawer in the front entranceway. “Set up on the kitchen table,” he advised.

Cas, shaking his head, said, “This is like being a flat earth anti-vaxxer.”

“I’m up to date on my shots, thanks,” Dean said, “But it sure sounded like Carleen to me.”

“It would, she was part of your life,” Cas said drily.

“Want a blindfold?”

“What?”

“Some people prefer it.”

He accepted the blindfold. It didn’t take long. Dean wrote down the letters. Cas went for an eighth letter but he stopped as he tore off the blindfold, saying that Carleen had directed her icy breeze onto his hands and face.

“MARYHIM,” read Cas in stupefaction.

“I got ‘BONEHIM,’” Dean said quietly. “I think she’s having a little fun at my expense.”

“If I hadn’t seen Carleen’s ghost dozens of times I’d suspect you of pranking me,” Cas said.

“I don’t know whether to walk you out of my house for thinking such a dumbass thing or kiss you for thinking I’ve got that much energy for – ” and baby Carleen started squawking, so it was half an hour of Dean smoothly going through everything required, starting with telling Cas, “Put the board away, please,” and ending with Carleen fed and changed and in a sling, sleeping against her daddy’s chest like nothing could ever trouble her. Because she was asleep, both men used soft voices.

Dean’s eyes flicked to the clock on the wall, after going to his wrist. “I had to stop wearing my watch; normally I wear a big clunky watch, but I kept scratching and bashing her with it, so I put a clock in the living room – ”

“You’ve changed a lot about your life for her.”

Dean’s eyes got _so_ soft. All the smirk, which Cas frankly hated, was gone. “I’d die for her,” he said. Then his face hardened and he said, “So what do you think of Carleen’s advice?”

“Will you marry me?” Cas asked, his eyebrows up but his face otherwise dead serious.

“Sure, Cas.”

“What?” Cas said in stupefaction. “I was merely repeating what I thought her advice was, for the sake of clarification.”

Limpid sorrow filled Dean’s voice. “Backing out of our engagement so soon? I’m tellin’ ya, Cas, I’m really feeling trifled with.” Ever energetic, he perked up. “Or do you want me to ask you? I’ve had some practice. Cas, will you marry me?”

“I feel like I’m in a very strange, possibly bad, dream,” Cas said, since any other answer seemed like it might veer off into true insanity.

“Then you probably need to sleep,” Dean said. “Come here, sit next to me, what can I do to you? I have a baby asleep on me.”

“I don’t know, Dean,” Cas said, “It seems to me you could do a lot to me, under nearly _any_ circumstance.”

“I’ll take that as flattery. Sit next to me.”

“Why?”

“You’re exhausted, and as long as we’re close together I don’t think she’ll bother you. So: put your head in my lap, and close your eyes.” Dean put his head back and soon the three of them were in dreamland.

Carleen stirred and Cas was awake right away. Dean barely woke; he saw that Cas had a good hold on his daughter and with perfect trust put his head back down. Carleen was hungry, and accepted her meal without question from a man who had held her from birth; her acceptance, and her intent stare as her eyes roamed over his face, soothed his nerves.

He would never forgive himself for his hand in her mother’s death, but he could look after her now, and that was enough for this moment, as she sucked contentedly at her bottle. After about fifteen minutes, Dean got up and said, “I got her, if you want to go home,” and Cas said, with a tired chuckle. “I don’t. I don’t want to go home.”

“There’s a pullout in the office down the hall,” Dean said.

The oversized reproduction of William Rimmer’s Evening (The Fall of Day) that looked out over the living room banged hard, once, on the wall.

“Really, Carleen?” Dean said, annoyed. Baby Carleen started to cry. “Look what you did, scaring your li’l gal like that.” He turned apologetically to Cas. “I think she wants us to sleep in the same bed. If I promise, one hundred percent, no funny business, are you okay with that?”

“I think I’d sleep in a ditch at the side of the road if it meant I wasn’t going to see her on the way to the toilet at night,” Cas said with grim certainty.

“You really haven’t been sleeping.”

“Dean, I’m a midwife, and broken sleep is my portion in life, and I have learned to deal.But having your late wife, in a hospital gown covered with blood, pointing and yelling at me, however silently, is not conducive to good bladder control.”

Dean’s mouth made a shocked little ‘O’. “You peed yourself.”

“Like a very small, very frightened child. I recollect some screaming in there, too.”

“I screamed pretty hard, too, but I don’t see the blood – I just see her face.”

“Oh. Oh, we maybe should have talked about this earlier, because you’ve been remarkably calm about it but all I can see is us banging in another two units and she gushed – oh I’m so sorry Dean, what I just said is so cruel and unprofessional.”

Dean wasn’t offended. He got it. “It’s what happened. You guys fought for her and lost, and we have to live what we did, like, not pretend it didn’t happen, and find the strength to go on. But we have each other, and baby Carleen.”

Cas looked at him for a long moment, not trusting himself to speak. When he managed to control himself, he said, “If you can obtain Carleen’s help without me needing to be frightened, I’d be more than happy to sleep in the same bed with you. Just so you know, I apparently talk in my sleep, snore, kick, punch and make, and I quote, ‘these inhuman, weird, whistle-y gurgle noises’ especially towards sunrise.”

“So, no sleeping with Carleen in the bed with me.”

“Dean, no, you really shouldn’t. I’ve seen you so tired you didn’t wake up when she cried.”

“I knew subliminally you were here and I was right, you took her.” Dean seemed eager to argue the point.

Cas wasn’t having any. “I won’t be comfortable unless you are completely awake, and you’re between me and her, so I can’t hurt her. Even then I’m not super enthused about it, do you understand?”

“Yes, dear,” Dean said.

Cas gritted his teeth. “I’m serious.”

“Yes, Cas, I know you are. But I do take her into the bed once in a while and I don’t want you crabby about it, so I’m glad we had this talk.”

Cas was immediately suspicious. “What talk? I made my objections clear.”

“We agreed no Carleen in the bed, unless you’re not around, in which case I do what I like.”

There was a long pause, during which Cas said nothing at a very high volume.

After a minute he spoke. “You’re a sound sleeper, Dean. You wish to be affectionate and close to your daughter and I support you with all that my heart and science will allow, but if you were to even briefly smother her or dislocate a limb you could affect her health for life, and if – ”

“Okay, okay, alright, I get it,” Dean said. Carleen was put through her routine for the night, and tucked into her bassinet. Dean was asleep before the first turn of the music box. Cas cleaned up for bed, helping himself to some of Dean’s clothes on the way to the bathroom, and like a heathen he brushed his teeth back in the bedroom, standing looking down on them both with a feeling of relief.

The house felt warm again; he was sure that wherever Carleen was at the moment, bothering anyone in this house was not on her agenda.

For the first time in days, he could sleep.

The little one woke a couple of times. Cas took care of her once, and Dean took care of her once, and in the morning they woke up simultaneously, pulling back from each other in surprise.

Covering his mouth, Dean said, “I forgot to brush my teeth,” and got up, staying on his side of the bed and looking down on Cas.

“I slept great,” Cas said, lying flat on his back and smiling with genuine relief.

“That’s good.”

“Is Carleen coming back?” Cas asked after a second. Dean wasn’t moving, he was rubbing his eyes and then he looked at Cas like he was breakfast. He acted like he hadn’t heard Cas.

“I’m gonna put coffee on.”

“Can you put the kettle on for tea?”

Dean had specifically purchased organic peppermint tea for the midwife; he already knew that Cas only drank coffee on special occasions. “Sure,” he said, smiling.

Cas thought, as he sat up to check on Carleen and learned that she was awake, and quiet, taking in the morning light against her mobile with the calm of a comfortable baby, and not in a hurry to be picked up. He ducked into the bathroom and considered getting back into his dirty clothes. He was off shift; it was wonderful to have a baby around and not have to hand her back right away.He was afraid to say anything like that to Carleen’s father, though.

Dean’s eyes widened, but not by much.

“She’s only good for about five minutes of being alone,” Dean chided.

“She knows we’re near; she can hear us talking,” Cas said.

Dean’s lips narrowed. Cas realized, with all the compassion in him, that Dean was trying very hard not to weep.

“I think it’s great, that you’re here, and she can hear us talking.” His face went from sorrow to confusion and embarrassment. “I mean baby Carleen. Big Carleen’s gone, for now, anyway. You let me know if you feel cold.”

“Yeah,” Cas said. “I will. I don’t feel her at all, and I haven’t seen her since I came here.”

“But we heard her,” Dean said.

“I thought she banged a picture.”

“My Led Zeppelin picture,” Dean clarified. “She was really trying to make a point.”

“I looked it up on-line, it’s not actually the Led Zeppelin logo,” Cas said.

“You looked it up on-line,” Dean said. He could use four different tones of voice at the same time, it was irritating, and also exhilarating because, the cad, you had to stay awake to deal with him. He needed an edge, and he needed it now. Cas said, “Well, now that the mind-melting obsessive crush I’ve had on you for the last six months is out in the open – ”

“Mind-melting,” Dean said. He was practically smacking his lips.

“Nah,” Cas said. “You don’t get to do that,” because he had long since figured out how things would go, if they went, at all, and he got out a zap-strap and before Dean could do more than flap his mouth in silent astonishment, he was cuffed, his hands out front.

“How the fuck did you do that?” Dean squawked, and Cas said, calmly - he wasn’t even out of breath, “You let me. Now, I’m going to go upstairs, and get Carleen, and do everything that needs to be done with her, and you’re just going to take a rest. The only reason you’re in cuffs is to fix it so you can’t to anything more complicated than take a pee or watch TV. Sit. Relax. Give yourself a chance to plan your day rather than be overwhelmed by baby care.”

“Jesus, so this isn’t you, ah,” and here Dean ground to a halt because he suddenly realized that using his words to describe anything that he was feeling would be a really bad idea.

“Dominating you sexually, like you’ve basically been demanding since the day I met you? At least with your body language, I really didn’t have any idea until recently that you were aware of it.”

“Then why were you –“

“My professional ethics. Also I was terrified of Carleen. I _knew_ that she knew and this, Dean, it’s all so complicated. The crush stopped in its tracks the day she died, and I felt so guilty, and so bonded to your daughter.” He deliberately made it clear who was family.

“I could see it on your face. How much you loved her,” Dean said. “I could never keep you away from her, whatever your professional association says. But you know, Cas, cuffing me is going to be a bit much to explain.”

Cas said, “I’m going to write them a letter and advise them that I’m in relationship with the husband of a client who died in my care.”

“Jeez,” Dean said. “If you put it like that they’ll yoink your licence like a bat outta hell.”

“Probably, yes,” Cas said, but Carleen squawked and that was the end of that conversation. Dean called after Cas, “Hold her skin to skin before you put her in her day clothes!”

Dean had the TV on low with the subtitles when Cas came back downstairs.

“What got you into babies?” Dean asked in wonderment. Carleen was in a good mood, even though she was likely hungry.

“Obstetrician mom and five younger siblings,” Cas said.

“Your mom was an obstetrician and she had how many kids?”

“You don’t know her,” Cas said. He was smiling. “And yes, seven children. Father was a neurosurgeon and we never got to see him unless we’d been exceptionally good or legendarily bad. Mom was around as much as she could be, but I got used to looking after babies because there was no one to stop me and I was getting good advice on how to go about things, mostly. I was always better at making babies be quiet than anyone around me, and I got all the way through medical school and – ” Here he paused, checking whether Dean was paying attention. “I couldn’t handle the medical model, you know, the hierarchy, the administrative cruelty, the jokes in the OR over the unconscious patient. It was inhumane, and expensive, and unnecessary, and my conscience wouldn’t let me do it.”

He sighed, and Dean nodded for him to go on.

“So there I was, thirty, and I’m back in school, midwifery school this time, and I’m the only man, although thank god not the only gay or gender-non-conforming person, only this time I’m supporting myself by fact-checking medical journalism, which is absolutely horrendous and soul-destroying, because my family isn’t paying for my schooling, and there are no scholarships in midwifery for white men, and understandably so, so I’m living on ramen… but then I do my practicum and I get the best comments that a midwife has received in this state and my marks are almost perfect and _then_ the doors open.”

“Because you are damned good at what you do.”

“And I lost a patient.”

“Cas… we _all_ lost her. Pregnancy is not a risk-free endeavor. I was here for it all, remember? and I’m caring for our child. I’m the one who dragged her into hospital when she was almost stroking out. You’re doing your best for everyone left behind, and you’re honoring Carleen’s memory, by helping us both.”

Cas sighed, deeply. After a minute, he said in a low, emotional voice, “They’ll say I’m abusing my authority in a profoundly manipulative and potentially devastating way. They’ll say I’m profiting because you got a decent insurance settlement and I’m used to living wealthy because I was raised that way and this is my ticket back into that lifestyle.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Cas.”

“They’ll say, if they even get a hint, even a little ghostly whiff about your wife and her continued audible and visible presence in our lives, that we’re victims of a ‘folie à deux’, a kind of joint mental illness between an emotionally bonded pair, or that we’re faking it to profit from Carleen’s death or to make other people believe our relationship is legit.”

“Which, technically, it isn’t.” Dean said. The cuffs put that into perspective. He raised his hands. “Then, there’s these things.”

“Well, that was to put you in a more, how shall I say, calm frame of mind. I figured out last night I’m not getting out of this with my professional designation. As soon as Carleen’s ready to sleep, I’ll remove them.”

She was fussy and he calmed her; she was dirty and he cleaned her; she was bored and he played with her, and then she guzzled her formula as if she wanted to set a record and fell asleep with her mouth still making sucking motions.

“Definitely your kid, too,” Cas said softly to the absent Dean, putting her in the downstairs bassinet.

He let Dean out of the zip-ties with a pair of scissors, at which point Dean manhandled him out of his clothes and blew him until he was a completely useless, panting lump of sated flesh.

The ‘Led Zeppelin’ graphic rattled on the walls as he came, and Cas and Dean never heard from Carleen again; the bumps and rattles and door slams and apparitions were completely gone.

Just in case, they visited her grave once a week, at least.

For whatever reason, the professional association didn’t say more than “thanks for advising us” when Cas reported his relationship to Dean.

“Do you supposed Carleen had something to do with that, too?” Cas said uneasily when he read the response. He’d been expecting the worst, but Dean sort of had that figured out about Cas by now.

Dean pulled his mouth away from his daughter’s tummy, where he had been planting raspberries while she squealed.

“Absolutely. Carleen brought you into my life, and she stuck around until me and the Midwife Man were good on our own.”

“What?”

“That’s what she called you. And I’m gonna call you that too. You’re my Midwife Man.”

Baby Carleen let out a little murmur of agreement, and Dean blew Cas a kiss. They might have gotten frisky, but the phone rang; after all, the Midwife Man was on call.


End file.
